At the Wire, VA Democratic Governor Primary Snaps into Focus:
24 hours until votes are counted in the Democratic Primary for Governor of Virginia, momentum shifts to Creigh Deeds, according to a SurveyUSA poll conducted for WJLA-TV Washington DC and WDBJ-TV Roanoke. In 4 identical SurveyUSA tracking polls, Deeds' support has gone from 22% to 26% to 29% to today 42%. Deeds finishes ahead of Terry McAuliffe, whose support has declined in each of the 4 tracking polls and who ends at 30%. Brian Moran, who has treaded water in 4 tracking polls, finishes 3rd, at 21%. To appreciate the extent to which the contest has turned upside down in 6 weeks, study SurveyUSA's exclusive interactive tracking graph.

Here's how the turnaround happened:

In the Washington DC suburbs, Deeds tripled his support, from 12% in April to today 40%. SurveyUSA's detailed analysis of Primary voting in 4 NE VA counties, released just 7 days ago, today looks like ancient history.

In a general election, Republican Bob McDonnell continues to narrowly defeat all 3 Democrats, as McDonnell has done in each of SurveyUSA's 4 tracking polls.

Filtering:
2,000 Virginia adults were interviewed by SurveyUSA 06/05/07 through 06/07/09. Of them, 1,685 were registered to vote. Of them, 535 were determined by SurveyUSA to be likely to vote in the 06/09/09 Democratic Primary. Virginia voters do not declare party affiliations, and any registered voter may vote in the primary. In SurveyUSA's final turnout model, 62% of primary voters describe themselves as Democrats, 29% as Independents, 8% as Republicans. All VA registered voters were asked the November general-election hypothetical match-ups.

Effect of weighting on these results:
SurveyUSA's unweighted data for this final poll shows Deeds at 44%, McAuliffe at 28%, Moran at 20%. The customary weighing adjustment that SurveyUSA makes to all research, to ensure that data reflect the geography being surveyed, took away 2 points from Deeds, added 2 points to McAuliffe, and added 1 point to Moran. All 4 SurveyUSA tracking polls were conducted identically.

If the Democratic Primary for Virginia Governor were today, who would you vote for? (candidate names rotated) Creigh Deeds? Terry McAuliffe? Or Brian Moran?

Regardless of what you told us about the June 9th primary, thinking ahead now to the GENERAL election in November... If the only two names on the ballot for Governor of Virginia were Republican Bob McDonnell and ... Democrat Creigh Deeds, who would you vote for?